1. Field
The present disclosure generally relates to integrated circuits. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to an integrated circuit that uses a pipeline of asynchronous circuits to provide advanced notice of the communication of timing signals to another integrated circuit.
2. Related Art
Existing approaches to proximity communication (such as capacitively coupled proximity communication) between adjacent chips or semiconductor die often rely on clock signals to communicate data. If both chips share a common clock, the sending and receiving chips can easily agree on when to sense data that appears on the capacitive coupling network. However, sharing a common clock may significantly increase power consumption and chip area and, thus, the cost of the integrated circuits.
In principle, this problem may be addressed by avoiding a common clock. However, without a common clock, it may be difficult for the receiving chip to know when to capture data from the capacitive coupling network. This is because proximity communication typically requires some agreement between the sender and the receiver about time. In particular, the sender usually must know when to present data values and the receiver must know when to capture them.
Hence, what is needed is an integrated circuit without the above-described problems.